LITERARY NOTES.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 465, 23 April 1890, Page 4

LITERARY NOTES.

(FROM OUR LONDON CORRESPONDENT.) London, February 14. The author of “In Tennyson Land” has been roundly snubbed by the Laureate’s son, who cruelly upsets Mr Walters’ most elaborate hypotheses. The originals of “Locksley Hall” and the “Moated Grange” have, avers Mr Hallam Tennyson, no existence. They were purely imaginative creations, and so were the dramatis persons of “The Northern Farmer,” the two “ Locksley Halls,” and “ The Northern Cobbler,” all of whom Mr Walters perspicuously identifies with certain persons supposed to be known to the Laureate. Lord Tennyson has obviously no sympathy with the localieiDg craze, for he further squelches his too ardent admirer by affirming that the scenes of “ Tne Owl,” “ The Dying Swan,” “ Oriana,” “ The Brook,” “Lady Clara Vere de Vere,” and “ The May Queen,” are not laid in Lincolnshire or any other shire. So profoundly undramatic (writes the Laureate’s son) is the temper of our time that a poet is not considered capable of imagining any dramatic action. Had “ A Midsummer Night’s Dream ” been written nowadays the public would have demanded and the literary and artistic “jobbers” would doubtless have promptly provided a photograph from life of the accomplished lady who suggested to the poet Titania, and an accurate water colour drawing of the real and original “ bank whereon the wild thyme blows.”

Max O’Rell is doing so well in the States that he will almost certainly travel on to Australia and New Zealand,. though much later than he had originally intended. At Boston he opened to an audience of 2,500 people, and lectured five times in the week to crowded houses. O’Rell (who has now quite dropped his own name, Paul Blonet, even in private life), receives 250 dollars a night, the manager pouching the balance. Up to the end of January over 150,000 copies of “Jonathan and His Continent,” had been sold in the States. A par. to the effect that Mr Edward Bellamy’s “ Looking Backward ” was the greatest literary success ever known in America, has had the effect of suddenly “ booming ” that work over here. For the last seven or eight months the brochure has sold only fairly well in England. Now, however, four different editions have made their appearance, and piles of Bellamy’s other and (till to-day) neglected works cumber the bookstalls. The continued success of “ Master of His Fate,” which is already in its third edition and asked for oftener and oftener every day, has inspired Mr Maclaren Cobban to afresh effort in a new direction. He is now busily employed on a novel for Messrs Warne, the interest of which will lie in the exposition of life in our work-house schools. The chief characters are a family of children, who are being taken care of by the eldest and are compelled by the operation of the poor law to go into the workhouse schools. The name of Rudyard Kipling, though a household word in India, where his “ Plain Tales From the Hills ” are to be found on every well-conducted bungalow, was but little known over here till a few weeks ago. Then some unmistakeably. capable articles and verses began to appear in “ Macmillan’s Magazine ” and other periodicals on Indian subjects. These experts identified as “Kipling’s you know,” and as most of us didn’t know we asked “Who’s Kipling?” and were informed, Kipling is young, Kiplingis clever and in India Kipling is a popular idol. If you want to sample the gentleman and don’t care to go to the expense of the aforesaid really admirable “ Plain Tales ’’ (price Gs), I should advise your looking up the “ Fortnightly Review,” and reading an article therein called “From the Other Side.” In the current “ Speaker ” Mr Augustine Birrell falls down at the feet of my friend Barrie, who I regret to say is very ill with Russian influenza. “ Everybody,” says tbe author of “ Obiter Dicta,” who speaks with authority, and not as ordinary scribes, “ is reading J. M. Barrie’s Scotch stories, ‘A Window in Thrums,’ and ‘AuldLicht Idylls.’ ” The instantaneous popularity of these two books is a beautiful thing. It is Faith’s Restorative; for it does nob annihilate the doctrine of the Universal Depravity of the Human Race, it goes a long way to justify a belief in their Final Restoration. The author has conceded nothing to the public taste. May he never do so ! He has been inflexible and resolute, an artist from first to last. Of Sentiment, that odious onion, not a trace is to bo found in these sweetsmelling pages. Bub tragedy is theie, and pathos well-nigh unbearable, and humour abundant, inevitable, yet always surprising, so cunningly is it hid. Mr Barrie has taken no pains to be understood. He plunges us in medias res. He has not thought fit to prepare a preliminary dissertation concerning Scotch manners and customs. He has avoided those theological niceties and theories of Church government which meant so much to tho men and women he describes. He does Dob even condescend to explain in a footnote the meaning of the title of one of his books, “Auld Licht Idylls.” And yet he cannot suppose many Englishmen to have read “Little Napthali,” or even the appendix to the “Judicial,Testimony,” published by the Old Light Burghers in the year 1810. He has not concerned himself with these things, and it may be conceded though I do so reluctantly, for “Little Napthali” is excellent reading—that he has done well.

Man’s life here below, as led by a Godfearing, albeit occasionally drunken race, with poverty and unremitting labour at the loom for their immediate portion, but with the assurance of immortality deep hidden in their hearts, is theme enough for a Shakspere. It is Mr Barrie’s theme, and nobly be he has treated it. In his small mirror, man, nature, and human life are faithfully reflected. The world is nob here ransacked in its remotest quarter to supply new sensations for jaded globe-trotting novel-readers. Tired of Balzac, tired of Tolstoi, tired, too tired, of Ibsen, what are these poor wearied ones to do pending an outburst of literary activity on the part of the Portuguese or some other hitherto dumb nationality ? Their taste is a peculiar one. Leeby and Jess, Jamie and Hendry, Lang Tammas and Cree Queery, are nob much like the heated heroes and heroines of the modern novel. The odours of the restaurant do not hang heavy over Thrums. But if the books are once taken up they will nob lightly be laid down, and when they are, it will be in what Carlyle has called “a comparatively blessed mood,” the reader feeling that he has passed his evening “ well and nobly, as in a temple of Wisdom, and not ill and disgracefully, as in brawling tavern supper-rooms, with fools and noisy persons.” Readers whose manhood will not allow them to weep must be warned off the'latter half of “Thrums.” But why need a man be ashamed to weep? Dandy Dinmonb wept as he beheld the recognition of Bertram by Dominie Sampson. “Deil’s in the man,” he blubbered, “he garr’d me do that I haena done since my auld mither died.” Who need wish to be a better man than he whose only reply to the smuggler who held Bertram by the collar was a blow that would have felled an ox ?

Mr H. Erroll, who followed up the successful “ Ugly Duckling” with a powerful but disagreeable novel, called “The Academician,” has now brought out a third work, with the not particularly original title, “A Woman’s Favour.” I will tell you what it’s all about.

The new half-a-crown edition of “ Robert Elsmere ” is “booming,” notwithstanding the huge sale of the book at six shillings. Mrs Ward’s forthcoming novel (which is actually in type, bub will bo delayed till autumn) does nob claim to be in the least theological. The “ Days of the Dandies ” will conclude in “Maga” for March. Bret Harte has written a novelette for “ Lippincott’s,” Grant Allen has stories in the forthcoming “ Longman’s ” and “ English Illustrated,” and Rudyard Kipling will contribute “ The Courting of Dinah Shadd ” bo “ Macmillan’s.” The latter is also to contain an article “ On Australia From Another Point of View.”

Macmillan’s announce a new 3s 6d edition of Miss Muloch’s works (to be published in their Colonial Library at 2s); also a novel by Judge Cunningham, author of “The Cceruleans,” called “The Heriots.” Another Anglo-Indian story of the Mutiny, called “The Rajah’s Heir,” is passing through the press. Smith Elder will publish it. Over 50,000 copies of Blackmore’s “ Lorna Doone ” in the recent 2s edition have been sold during the last six months. Zola’s new novel, “ The Human Animal,” will be published by Charpenbier in May. It is a criminal romance with a detective hero.